The Story of the Soaring Eagle
by CutelittleMouseygirl
Summary: I'm getting closer to canon for once with a story of 2p!America! Some chapters might be more M rated, but I will provide a warning at the beginning of those chapters! Have fun!
1. Chapter 1

"Mama?" The boy looked up at the young woman with his dark red eyes. They were getting ready to go to sleep after having tended to the farm, gathered food, and many other things.

"Yes, Al-Tair?" she asked.

"How come the other boys are so darker than me?"

The woman sighed. Al-Tair, her young son sitting on the sandy floor of their hut, was a halfling. His father, whom she'd always told him died in a hunt, was a white man, from Europe. He was a scary one, too. She could remember his deceptively calm blue eyes, as bright as the daytime sky, with just a hint of a color of flowers in them, and how sometimes, those colors blended together like paint in water. Al-Tair did not have those eyes. He instead had dark red. He was, however, lighter than the other boys, who were un-mixed in their heritage. She could always pick out her son among the herd of dark, fuzzy heads by his wavy, red-brown hair when he played with the other children, and the only one of the small boys of the village paler in skin than him was Masi, an albino who somehow, through wearing of dried-reed hats and deerskin tunics, managed to escape the sunburning that other albinos went through.

Masi's mother was very devoted to her one surviving child. Al-Tair's mother, although haunted by the man with the dried-reed hair and sky-blue eyes loved Al-Tair, too.

"Well, your father, well... he was... light. So you, his son, are also light. But you know what?"

"What, Mama?" Al-Tair asked, looking up, cutely.

"You remember what your name means in the tongue of the white men?" she asked.

"Yeah! I'm Al-Tair, which to white men means 's-soaring-eagle,' right?" he said, grinning.

"That's right. 'Soaring eagle' is a bird who flies way above the others, even the cranes. And 'soaring eagle' also has white and brown feathers- he is very light colored, just like you, little Al-Tair." she said, smiling. With that, the two lay down to sleep. The mother had been kidnapped as a child of about ten, by the man with the sky-blue eyes- Al-Tair's father who, as soon as she grew old enough to resemble an adult, at about fifteen, got her with a child. Then, she'd run away once she heard of why he wanted a female slave to produce halfling children. She was of a different people then this village, but they accepted her all the same, since she'd shown up to several foraging women, five years ago, large with child and not knowing any language but the white man's.

Al-Tair had lived his five years of life so far here instead of as a servant to the blue-eyed man, which she was grateful for.


	2. Chapter 2

Al-Tair's mother was cleaning some yams up for their mid-day meal when her son came running, along with the other children.

"Mama, Mama! There's a big boat on the shore! Masi saw it first, and showed all of us! Sachi said we better run and tell the olders!" he said excitedly.

Sachi was one of the older girls, at twelve. She generally was seen as a leader to all of the younger children. The woman looked up as a horn sounded, and men shouted, "Party of white men coming this way, we should hide our children!"

The other thing Al-Tair's mother liked about this village was that they didn't question anything, including her lack of normal aging, and they distrusted white men already. She picked Al-Tair up and prepared to rush into the jungle with him, like other mothers were doing with their small children already. Then, he was in front of her. The man with the pale sandy hair and the sky-blue eyes. Al-Tair's father.

"There you are!" He said, cheerily, and then his eyes flicked to Al-Tair, looking in wonder, clutched to his mother's bare breast. Al-Tair wore the white lines of paint under his eyes that all small boys wore to advertise their station as male children. Beyond the paint, he was naked, as all children under ten were. He also wore a white beaded necklace his mother had made for him with a small tab of stone, with an emblem of an eagle on it. The eagle's lines had been filled with white clay, to make it stand out on the darker stone.

"Is that my baby?" He asked, and the woman, in her accented white-man speak, said,

"No. He is mine."

"Ah, so that _is_ the little one, then?" the man said, smiling, his eyes darkening. "I suppose I ought to take him with me so he will grow up normally."

"He stays with me." she growled. Men of the village, with their spears and a couple guns were starting to gather around. Al-Tair, picking up on the situation, although he didn't know the white-man speak whimpered and buried his face into his mother's chest, his small form in her arms light against her dark tone. The sandy-haired man leaned forward, and as the tribal warriors backed off, he took the small child from the woman.

Al-Tair immediately started crying, reaching for his mother. The mother had, however, seen the white men with their big guns ready to fire on anyone who tried to stop them from taking the child.

"Mama! Mama!" He called out, wriggling so he was over the man's shoulder and could see his mother. She was crying, the tear tracks on her cheeks glistening in the sun. Then, the man rounded a corner. The image of his mother standing there, crying in the sunlight, was the last memory of Africa Al-Tair had.


	3. Chapter 3

"My name is Alphonse Jones." I've been taught to tell people, and not Al-Tair, which is what Mama called me. I've lived here in Oliver's house for three years now, which makes me eight. Today, my brother who is my age, is going to school. Oliver says I can't go to school because of my skin, which is darker than everyone else in the town, except the slave boys.

I am not a slave boy, Oliver told me, but I still can't go to school like Jamie can, because dark-skinned boys don't go to school. So I stay at home with Oliver. He's nice and lets me eat all the sweets I want, anyway.

Oliver says his favorite thing to make is red velvet cakes. I agree with him. I also like helping make meat pies and other things. I also have to do chores. I take out bags of garbage and bury them in the yard, because trash doesn't stay in the house. I also have to be careful to not drip the red trash water on my clothes because then Oliver will be mad. Oliver is scary when he's mad.

You know how I said dark-skinned boys don't go to school? Well, today, since today is the first day of Jamie sitting with the bigger boys in the back, I am allowed to go as his slave boy. I have to sit in the very very back with the other dark kids but Oliver says if I listen really hard and take Jamie's old slate and pen, I'll be able to learn just as much as Jamie. After all, Jamie's been teaching me reading and writing and numbers since we were little.

So I follow Jamie to school and everyone is looking at me, 'cuz I'm different. A boy comes up to me and looks at me and my canvas bag on my back and mine and Jamie's lunch pail in my hands and pushes me because I'm smaller than him. When I fall, he starts laughing really hard. Jamie turns right around. All the other kids are afraid of him, he says.

"What are you doing?" He shouts at the other kid, who shrugs.

"I was just messin' with this little idiot Negro boy who thinks he's going to school!" he tells Jamie, who growls at him,

"That 'idiot Negro boy' is my brother! And you better leave him alone or I'll pound your face in!"

I realize then that lots of the other kids are bigger than me. I'm sort of small and skinny and I still, even at eight, have missing front teeth. When the first one came out, Oliver said I had to look better and so he got some pinchy pliers and pulled out the other one. It hurt and I bled all over, but Oliver was happy, so I was happy. Anyway, that's probably why my top teeth haven't come back in yet.

Anyway, I follow Jamie into the school, and he goes up to the young lady who is the teacher. She looks at him and smiles.

"Who's this you've got with you, James?"

Grown-ups call Jamie his full name James, and kids call him Jamie. He pushes me in front of him and says,

"This is my servant boy, Alphonse. He's gonna come in with me from now on. He's the same age as me."

The teacher nods and smiles at me, then tells me to go into the very back row against the wall where I will sit because I am a Negro boy, and therefore not allowed to learn. I remember a little bit back when my name was Al-Tair, I was the lightest boy in the village. Now I'm the darkest without being a real slave.

First, the white kids come up one by one for role-call. Ada Adams, Jeremy Benson, Johnny Dane, Mary and Glinda Hanson, Sean McMalley, Annie Thompson and James Williams. Jamie is registered under the school with a different name than Oliver for some reason. We also live on the very outskirts of Boston, where all the farms are. I think it's because of Ollie and his trash habits and the way he used to be a butcher back in England. I think everyone's afraid of him.

There's a little girl next to me on the slave bench and she's wearing a flowery dress with a white collar that goes down to her ankles. She doesn't have shoes on, like I do. I'm wearing one of Jamie's old outfits- a white shirt and a dark blue vest and red ribbon tie, brown breeches down to my knees and white stockings and shoes.

"How come you don't have shoes?" I ask her quietly.

"I haven't ever been given any." she tells me. I nod and then as the lessons are starting, I pull out my slate.

"Do you know your letters and times tables?" I ask her.

"No, of course not!" she says, looking surprised. I smile and write 'em out and show it to her.

"Here, I'll teach you." I point out the letters and show her what each of them does. "What's your name?"

"Clementine." she says. I sound it out in my head and write: C-L-E-M-E-N-T-I-N-E on the slate.

"That's how you write your name. Can you copy the letters under mine?" I ask. This is exactly how Jamie taught me to read- he started with my name, A-L-P-H-O-N-S-E and then his name, J-A-M-E-S and then O-L-I-V-E-R and so on until I knew a lot of words. She copies my letters the best she can and then smiles.

"That's how to write my name?" she asks me. I nod and grin.

"Yup. Here's how to write my name, which is Alphonse-" I say, writing that down, "but everyone calls me Al or Alphy."

"Al sounds like a grown up name." she says, smiling. Gosh, she's pretty cute like that. Wow.

* * *

It's dinnertime now and half the kids who live in the town go to their houses to eat, including Clementine and her owner. Jamie and me sit at a rock that acts as a table and open our dinner-pail. Oliver's made some roast sandwiches for us. He also put some fresh peaches from our tree in, and the best thing, a little chocolate, red-tinted cake for each of us, frosted with the best creamy sweet icing ever. Oliver only uses white sugar in his icing and cakes, and he says the red comes from the way it's mixed up just right. We save them for last, since Oliver is the best cook in the whole town, as far as baking.

The sandwiches are on the best white, fluffy bread and the meat is cooked perfectly. Oliver always makes the best food. We share our cakes around with the other boys, since we're nice, and they agree the I'm not so bad, and that our dad makes the best cakes ever.

School, I think, is gonna be fun!


	4. Chapter 4

Today, I go to see Clementine. She lives with the storekeeper and is the slave to his daughter who is our age. The daughter is ugly, I think. She's chubby and got a fat pink face and her stringy blond hair is always hanging straight in her face down to her shoulders, with her bangs cut straight across her forehead and a big pink bow tying the back up. She also wears these gross puffy pink and white dresses.

Clementine is pretty, though. She's tall and thin, and even though she wears only raggy, bag-like dresses, I like her. She has smooth, dark skin, darker than mine by a bunch of shades, almost the color that Mama's was. Her hair is curly and fluffy and black, unlike mine. I guess I got Oliver's reddish hair put into me, and it's straight, too. Oliver's brothers, across the ocean have red hair, he says.

I picked her a flower on the way down, and I even saved her some of my old shoes from the attic. She's doing laundry with her mama but she runs over to me when I come up.

"Alphonse! How did you get away from your Master?" she asks me.

"I don't have one." I said. She looked at me confused. "I live with my dad and my brother, just outside of town."

"Are you one of those Kirkland boys?" she asks me, suddenly.

"Uh, yeah?" I say, confused.

"My mama says to stay away from them, especially their daddy." she says.

"I'm not so bad!" I tell her, smiling. I don't know why people think we should be stayed away from. We're good kids, and Oliver is so nice!

* * *

"Ollie!" I call out, and he's in the kitchen, chopping meat. He stops and turns towards me as I run up.

"What is it, love?" he asks me, turning with the blood from the animal still dripping off his knife.

"I went to go see Clementine, and she says that people are supposed to stay away from me and you and Jamie. Why's that?"

His eyes sort of darken and his face blanks all expression for a moment, and then he smiles at me and hands me a smaller version of his knife. I climb up onto a stool he had made for us boys to help him cook with and start cutting the fat off of the chunks of meat he gives me. The whole time I'm doing this I'm watching Oliver who's cutting the meat I hand back to him into little bits. Mincing, I think he told me that's called. We're probably having cottage pie tonight for supper. Yum. Ollie makes the best cottage pies. It's a meat pie with a potato mash all over it and baked in the oven. Finally, Oliver speaks, telling me why people think they should stay away from us.

"There are people who spread nasty rumors about me." he says, not looking up from the meat. "They say I'm a murderer, who kidnaps and kills children for my own gain."

He doesn't say anything else, so I keep cutting the white fat off of the meat chunks and handing them to him. Soon, I stop and look at him, busily chopping up the meat into little bits.

"Are you a murderer?" I ask, just because I'm curious. He stops dead and looks at me with a burning intensity in his eyes. I step back a little on my step-stool.

"Little boys should not ask such questions, don't you think, Alphonse?" he says, really calm, even though everything on his face says he's mad. Shaking a little, I nod and say really quietly,

"Yes, Ollie..."

Then we go back to preparing supper and he doesn't mention it ever again.


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: This chapter contains graphic content that may be better suited for an M-rated fic, but I am not in the business of bumping an entire story's rating up for one or two chapters of M content. Use caution if graphic descriptions of violence and blood and gore and pretty much cannibalism freak you out. Thanks. ~CutelittleMouseygirl**_

* * *

I am ten. Jamie was ten a couple days ago, because he is older than me by that much. I can't go to school with Jamie after this summer because a ten-year-old boy doesn't need his servant with him all the time. Also Jamie protecting me from bullies was causing trouble. Jamie's way of protecting me is to punch whoever is being mean. So, I'm also not allowed to go to the school because of that.

Oliver lets me sit at the dining table while I eat a yellow cake with powdered sugar dusted on it. Jamie got a knife for his birthday, so he's out trying to hunt some "good game". Also, for our birthdays, Christophe is visiting. Christophe is Jamie's other dad. I don't know who his mom was, if he has two dads, but I don't know a lot of stuff, so it's okay. Christophe is kind of gruff and angry, but we love him anyway, and sometimes he shows us, like coming to see us on our tenth birthdays, that he loves us too.

Christophe has a little girl, who Jamie says is his sister. Or brother. Or maybe he has both a sister and a brother. I don't remember, and the answer changes every time I ask. Christophe is leaving his kid who is Jamie's sibling behind, since the kid's birthday was the same day as Jamie. I don't know how old this kid is, and I haven't ever met him. Or her. Or them. Whatever. Jamie says they were separated when Jamie was five, which is the same age I was when I was taken away from Mama. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a replacement for this kid that Christophe took away, but then Oliver says that's rubbish and he loves me as a separate kid to that one.

Oliver has been stressed out because of Christophe being here, and we've been warned to not make him angry. I never make Oliver angry. I stay out of the way and help when I am asked.

So I eat my cake and watch as Jamie goes runs into the house, his face smudged in dirt, his shirt also all dirty, his pants torn on one knee and his boots muddy since the woods behind the house are wet, holding his dirty arm.

"Ollie!" he calls out pain obvious in his voice, and Oliver turns around in shock.

"Jamie? Are you alright?" he asks, crouching down to Jamie's level.

"I got bit by a fox!" he says, uncovering his arm, showing Oliver the bleeding bite mark on his wrist. Oliver is about to start gushing over him and probably clean him up, give him a cookie and send him off, but then he notices how dirty Jamie is. We're not supposed to track mud onto the floor. We're supposed to take our muddy shoes off, or wash our feet in the horse trough before we come in. Jamie didn't. There's a bunch of boot-prints leading right to Jamie on the floor. Oliver's face blanks expression, and I slide under the table, leaving my half-eaten cake on its plate.

"James, do you see those muddy footprints?" he asks calmly. Jamie looks scared and looks to me, and I make the worst decision of my life when I shake my head, telling Jamie to play dumb.

"No Ollie, I don't." Jamie says, looking up innocently at Oliver's blanked face. When there's no expression on Oliver's face, it means he is angry.

"Well, child, they do lead right to you. Bit of a shame you can't see them, with two good eyes. People might think you're lying, like that." he says, standing up. Then he turns to Jamie and holds out his hand. "James, may I see your knife for a second?" Jamie hands it over. Oliver turns it over in his hands, looking at the shiny blade, the nice wood handle, the sharpness of it and everything, and then a really dark, scary smile comes over his face. "Now, James, what I am going to do, is remedy your eye problem." his smile goes into a grin, and it's still terrifying. "And from now on, nobody will think you are lying when you say you cannot see something."

Then, Oliver puts his hand on Jamie's forehead and as I watch, shaking under the table, even with Jamie's eye shut tight, Oliver slides the knife into Jamie's right eye and scrapes it all the way around, the blood gushing. Jamie is screaming and crying now, but he knows it'll be worse if he moves to get away, so he lets Oliver cut aroud the eye, pop it out with a flick of the knife, and cut the string of guts holding it in his head, leaving a black hole that's gushing blood. The eyeball falls into Oliver's other hand and he does that creepy smile.

"There. Isn't that better? You have an excuse now, brat." He looks the eye over and his smile twitches a little. The blood is all down Jamie's face, mixing with his tears, and it's dripped down the front of his vest and is starting to drip onto his boots and pants and the smooth pale floor. I feel like I'm gonna throw up from all of this, and then Oliver, holding Jamie's eye by the string that held it in his head commands to him, "Open your mouth, love."

Jamie is crying, and shakes his head, and Oliver says, "If you'd like to keep the other one, you'll do it." so Jamie does, opening his mouth, and then Oliver drops the eyeball into his mouth and murmurs to him, "There, now eat it up, love, it's alright." As soon as Jamie finishes, Christophe, having heard the screaming and crying runs in.

"James! What the hell happened to you?" he asks, and Jamie is crying so hard he can't answer, and points at Oliver, who is still holding the bloody knife. Oliver looks very upset when Christophe turns to him and he lies:

"The poor thing ran in here crying and bleeding and eyeless like this- I suspect he hurt himself with his knife something awful on accident." then Oliver sees me shaking as I try to get to mine and Jamie's room were I can curl up in the wardrobe and hide for a long time. "Alphonse!" I stop dead. "Run to the chemist's and get some bandages and laudanum for your brother, and hurry!"

"Y-yes Ollie." I say and run. I run the whole way there, and feel tears being whipped off my face as I run. I don't want to live there with Ollie anymore. I want to go back to Mama in the sandy village with the other dark-skinned kids. I wanna go home. I stop just outside the chemist shop and sit there, breathing hard, holding this dumb charm I have from before Oliver took me in. It's a white stone with a painted engraving of an eagle. That's what my old name, Al-Tair meant. It meant I was a soaring eagle. Now, I'm just Alphonse. Alphonse, a dark-skinned boy living in Boston with a psycho.

* * *

Jamie has bandages all over his face now. He's also wearing his white nightshirt, too. He looks pale and shaky when Christophe leads him down the stairs to the family room. Oliver's face brightens up and he grins,

"Aw, there's my brave boy! Come here!"

Jamie hugs him stiffly and walks over to where I am by the fire and sits close to me, and then lays his head on my shoulder. I hold his hand. It's all the comfort we can offer each other about what we both know happened today. Now I know why Christophe ran away with Jamie's brother-sister-whatever. It's because Oliver is a psycho.

Our kind are supposed to re-grow things unless they're really bad injuries. We're immortal, and once we reach a certain age we don't grow anymore. We can't be killed, unless the country we have ties to collapses.

Jamie's eye doesn't grow back.


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N: This chapter is less graphic so read away. My opinion as an American teenager is that if I'd see it in a PG-13 movie it's fine under a T rating.**_

* * *

It is fall now and Jamie is going back to school. I'm walking with him since he still isn't entirely used to only having one eye. He wears an eyepatch he got from a clothing shop since people kept asking him about the big scar on his face and the open hole where his eye used to be. The eyepatch, meant for a bigger person than poor 10-year-old Jamie covers the scar fine. The scar is this jagged thing that goes down into his socket, half out the bottom, and then there's just the empty, black socket because the eyelid was cut off totally in Oliver's cutting around the edge to free the eye up. Jamie finds it gets sore if he doesn't put wet bandages on it under the patch, so he does it every morning.

It doesn't hurt anymore otherwise, he says, and he even let me put my finger in it one time. It's hot and damp in there and a little scary to know your finger is in your brother's eye socket. The kids in the town are growing braver in their bothering us because I guess Oliver hasn't been around since the accident. For example, as we get close to the school, a boy shouts at Jamie,

"Hey, Cyclops! Didn't know you were Blackbeard's cabin boy!"

I glare at him and shout back, "I didn't know you wore petticoats under your shirt!" and when he looks at me all confused I fake a laugh really loud and say, "Oh, wait, I guess that's just how fat you are, sorry!"

He runs at us and I grab Jamie's arm and try to run, but he doesn't run and instead gets into a fight with the boy and beats him up. At the end of it, Jamie holds the kid up by his shirt front and goes, "Go on home and nobody has to know you got your ass kicked by a one-eyed kid." and shoves him away and the kid takes off.

I look at Jamie for a while and then grin. My front teeth are halfway in now, so I look less stupid.

"You beat that kid up just like you always could!" I say.

"And you tossed out a dumb insult like you always do." he agrees. Then we're at the school.

"James!" the teacher says, "Why on earth are you wearing that eyepatch? Take it off right now!"

Jamie shrugs. "You're the boss, ma'am." and takes it off, showing the nasty scar and the wet bandages packed in his socket.

"The bandages, too, James. Honestly what were you trying to do-" the teacher's face pales as she's shown the empty socket, Jamie looking up at her with his one eye. "Um, well..." she says, and Jamie puts the bandages and patch back into place. The teacher keeps staring at him.

"It starts to hurt if I let it in the air for too long." he explains. "Plus Father says I might take infection if I'm not careful. I lost it over the summer in a hunting accident. It's a wonder I'm not dead, ma'am."

"It... certainly is." the teacher agrees. "But your slave boy is still not allowed in, as this school stopped letting that slide." I sulk and kick at the dusty road. As Jamie starts to go up the stairs, he stops for a second and then turns to look at me.

"Hey, Al," I look up at him. "Hang around the town 'til school's out and we'll go home together. You don't gotta hike all the way back home alone. That fat kid's probably out for blood anyway."

I nod and sit down on the ground to show him that I'm gonna stay put.

* * *

"Alphonse! Alphonse!" It's Samantha Johnson, the storekeeper's ugly daughter and Clementine's owner. "Alphonse Jones come here!" she shouts, and I do. I was just fooling around in the general store. One of the things I'm best at is hiding things from the storekeeper without him noticing. I bet I could steal things from the store if I really wanted to. I go over to Samantha. She doesn't go to school as often as all the boys because she needs to help her mother with her baby siblings.

"What do you want?" I ask, crossing my arms and looking her up and down. Since the accident, me and Jamie have been trying to seem tougher so nobody'll mess with us.

"I can't find Clementine and I thought since she hangs around the only other of her kind in town that you'd know where she is." Samantha says, and I just shake my head.

"I dunno. I haven't seen her since that time she went over to my house last."

Oliver thinks its cute that I have a "little friend" like Clementine, so he lets her come over whenever she wants. We go into my room, or into the stable if the weather is nice and we talk about what we're gonna do when we're older and she's not a slave anymore and we're allowed to do all the things like go to fancy schools and even to universities that white people can do. She says when I can own my own land, we'll buy a house at the very fringe of the colonies, and we'll have a house and pretty little dark-skinned kids and we'll be happy. I'd like that. I really would.

* * *

At supper, Oliver puts in front of me a plate with some cuts of meat on it. It's tender and salty and good. Jamie is chattering about school to Oliver, and I just stay quiet and eat. I hit something with my teeth that doesn't feel right. I take it out of my mouth and find it's a metal musket ball.

Oliver doesn't have a musket. Only the redcoat soldiers do. Funny. Clementine was caught in the crossfire of a soldier firing at a rioter once. She came to school with Samantha the next day with her leg in a bandage. They didn't ever take the ball out. I would'a never thought about it before, but after watching my brother get his eye cut out and forced to eat it, I'm not so sure about Oliver's motivations.

"Ollie," I start and he looks at me, startled that I'd talk. "what kind of meat is this?" He gives me that cheery smile and tells me,

"Oh, it's some darker meat I picked up at the marketplace. A little tough, but I did do my best with it. Don't you like it?"

"Why'd I find this in it?" I ask, holding out the little metal ball. Oliver's face darkens and I swallow hard. "Ollie, you don't have a musket. Why'd I find a ball in my meat?"

"Now, now, Alphonse, remember what I told you when you were little, about how little boys shouldn't ask such things?"

I get mad now, and stand up as tall as I can. "The other kids say you kidnap people. My friend Clementine went missing today in the marketplace. She got shot by a musket once. They never took the ball out. I found a ball in my food. What's going on?!" I shout the last part and Oliver is instantly by my side, holding my arm and hissing in my ear,

"Alphonse, I think it's time you learnt to be a little more well-behaved at my table."

He drags me away, down into the basement, which I have never been in before, and I scream as I see the blood all over the floor and walls. Oliver puts me in a chain around my neck and puts me up against the wall with more of 'em on my hands and he's humming as he takes the knife and carves it into my side: M-I-S-T-A-K-E

Then he cuts me down, and I'm left there, in a crying, bleeding heap, left in the cold, dark basement alone and knowing that I'll never get to see my dreams, not with Clementine.

Clementine is dead, and Oliver's the one who killed her.


	7. Chapter 7

It's been six years since I first found out Oliver was a cannibalistic murderer, and there is someone knocking on the front door. I go just enough up the stairs so that I can see who it is but they can't see me.

I'm sort of what you'd call a menace, in these, my teenage years. I'm thinking I might follow the lead of the citizens and get outta here soon, kicking the British out and all that. I'm not allowed to sleep in James' room anymore. My room is the dark, wet basement. Why am I not living in the house like part of the family? Because I quit eating meat.

For two years after that first night I was locked in that basement I struggled along. I threw up every time I ate something Oliver had made, almost. Then, I just decided I wouldn't. I will eat everything else, but if it's the body of an animal, there's no way I'll touch it

Anyway, I'm sitting on the stairs, watching the door as James answers it. He still has that eyepatch. It doesn't cover the scar as well anymore now that he's grown. As we've grown, I've found that he's big and broad-shouldered and tall, and I'm just small and scrawny. He's always been bigger than me, though. So, I sit back and watch James answer the door. It's Christophe, and a thin, pale girl in a pink sailor-top dress.

James has the same eyes as this girl- well, eye, but they're this really obvious light purpley-blue- a lot like Christophe's. She also has this dirt-brown hair that's in a messy, short style. Maybe she got sap in her hair, or is recovering from lice and that's why it's so short. As I get closer to her, I see how thin her face looks, almost like a young guy's, and the dark freckles spanning across her nose, just like Oliver. I have those freckles, but my dark skin hides them pretty well. James doesn't, and neither does Christophe, but I know as soon as I see that saddle of freckles, that I'm looking at Oliver's third kid- James' twin. Looks like it is a sister.

I wondered why she never came with Christophe before now, but looking at her, she's smaller even than me, and I was one of the smallest kids in town growing up, and so frail-looking. I feel like she's sort of sickly and that's why she didn't ever travel all the way from the Great Lakes colonies. But not apparently she's here. She's pretty cute, actually.

"Uh, hi, Christophe. I haven't seen you in a long time." James says. Then he looks at the girl. "Who're you? His new girlfriend?"

The girl giggles and then when she talks... Crap, it's a guy. What's he doing in a dress, anyway? I am feeling very confused right now.

"Aw, Jamie, don't you remember me?" he asks, smiling. James shakes his head. James is really quiet sometimes, but more people know him than me. People still think I'm his slave. It sucks. The cute boy in the dress keeps smiling as he says, "It's me- Jacob!"

Then, James' one eye widens as he remembers something. He looks the kid over and smiles at him finally. "Jacob... you're all grown up now!"

"As are you!" Jacob agrees, looking up at James who has to be something like six feet tall by now. Then he, like everyone else, notices James' eye patch and the jagged scar under it. "Jamie, what happened to your eye?"

James flips up the patch to show off the black, empty socket. He stopped having to put wet bandages in it 'cuz I guess it healed up to that point. I think he still has to wash it, though. I don't know, since I'm almost never allowed out of the basement after dinner and before breakfast. Jacob looks wide-eyed at the empty hole and softly goes,

"Oh, wow. How'd that happen?"

"I had an accident when I was a kid." he says. It wasn't an accident, we both know, but it's easier on us to just say it was.

"You lost your eye on accident?" Jacob asks, not believing it.

"It was a sharp knife." James replies.

"Well, anyway, I'm glad to get to see you again, Jamie! Oh, wow, is that your servant?" he asks, seeing me. James looks me over before just a little bit of a smile comes onto his face.

"I really hope he isn't."

"Hey!" I protest, and then since Jacob the girly-boy is still looking at me, I put on my best smirky, flirty face and go, "I'm Alphonse, and I guess I'm your half-brother. You can call me Al."

Jacob extends his hand to me like the best of fine ladies and dips a little bit. " _Enchanté_ " he says as he touches my hand, smiling serenely.

Sheesh he's cute.

* * *

"And a salad for Alphonse once we are all finished..." Oliver says, glancing at me in my place at the very end of the table. I haven't gotten dessert in years. I get breakfast scraps, whatever I can sneak for dinner, and supper after everyone is done and everything is cleaned up. Because little mistakes don't deserve to be treated like real people.

But since we have company, instead of making me sit on the floor in the corner like normal, I am allowed to sit at the table.

"Oh no, love, he's in trouble so I am making him wait." Oliver says, smiling. He made lots of salad since Jacob doesn't eat meat either, apparently. Maybe he just doesn't eat human meat. It smells great, and since I haven't been able to sneak much food, and today's breakfast scraps were ham, which I don't eat, I'm starving.

"Ollie," I start and he looks over at me, startled that I'd talk at the table. "can I please have my food now? I haven't eaten all day."

He goes on cutting up the meatloaf on his plate and says like I'm a child, "Well, Alphonse, that is your own fault."

I swallow back the spit pooling in my mouth since I'm so hungry and it smells so good and I say, "Ollie you know I don't eat meat and you tried to give me ham this morning! That's not fair!" Then the knife slams down right in front of me into the table. Oliver threw it. Then he forces that creepy-ass smile on his face and says in that creepy calm voice,

"Excuse us for a moment." and grabs my arm and drags me into the basement, where James' old bed is my current one and that's when I'm not left shackled to the wall. The wall is where I go now and Oliver produces this big kitchen knife from somewhere and I swallow hard.

"Ollie, I'm sorry, I'm just hungry! Don't hurt me, please!" I beg.

"Hmm, what to put on you this time..." He murmurs to himself. I whine through my nose. If I scream, there goes my voice box, out of my throat and in his hand. I learned that the hard way. I'm really glad that I heal from fatal injuries. As for the 'what to put on me' thing, Oliver carves words into my body. When I was little, the first one he did was "Mistake" and then "Accident" and "Worthless," "Useless," stuff like that.

"Hmm, there have been a few of the town's young girls who've come up with little dark-skinned babies, looking for you. Where else am I getting the meat, since the townsfolk are on the lookout for me, after all?" Oliver muses. I feel like I'm going to be sick. Which will get my stomach slashed open. Instead I whine again. Then Oliver's smirk spreads across his face. "Ah, I know..."

Then, he gets to work and I can't scream, or else I'll be hurt worse.

* * *

I was left un-chained tonight, so I creep upstairs to James' bed, like I often do. We shared a bed as kids and it makes us both feel better.

"Jamie..." I murmur, crawling into his arms. He stiffens up, "'S me, Jamie. Al."

Me and James are a little... sick, I guess you could call it. We aren't really related, so we give each other what we need, and it's okay. I guess it's a way we comfort each other, too, since Oliver would literally have our heads if he caught James showing any sort of extended affection toward me.

He holds me and runs his fingers through my hair, then notices the new word in my back: "Whore."

"He got you again, didn't he?" he asks. I nod and wriggle in closer. James sighs. "I don't think you're a whore." he tells me and kisses me.

That's all we can do with little Jacob sleeping on a pallet on the floor, but it's enough.


	8. Chapter 8

I sit there and watch everyone get breakfast. I stare intensely at the egg bowl and the toast platter, urging someone to not eat all of it so I can have some too.

"Alphonse, why aren't you eating like the rest of the family?" Oliver asks me. I look at him like he's crazy. I mean, he is, but I don't usually look at him like that.

"Because I'm not supposed to?" I say. Oliver's eyes flash a little. They shine when he's happy and the colors seem to swirl together when he's really mad. They flash when he's trying not to get upset. I look down at the empty plate in front of me.

"Oh, Alphonse, that's nonsense! Have some eggs, maybe toast?" Seems like Christophe or Jacob said something about me not being allowed to eat with everyone else last night. I bet it was Jacob. Christophe doesn't care enough about us to do something like that. Jacob seems pretty friendly from what I've seen. Eccentric, but friendly. I take some eggs and a piece of toast gratefully.

"Jacob, love, would you like some sausages?" Oliver asks. According to James he's been like this ever since last night, fretting over Jacob like this.

"No, but thanks for offering." Jacob says. Oliver starts to offer me some, but I shake my head,

"I don't eat meat anymore, remember?"

So for the first time in four years, I eat with the family. I'm expecting to get dragged back off to that torture room of a basement any second, and I haven't eaten for an entire day now, so I don't really focus that much as Oliver puts a glass of milk in front of me. That is, until I try it. It's weird and sweet and thick, so I ask him what sort of milk it is.

"It's fresh." is all he says. I've never really had fresh milk since we get it at the marketplace, so I shrug it off as something that fresh milk tastes like.

"Hey, Jacob, wanna come see the town with us?" I ask him. Today Jacob is wearing blue, knee-length, schoolboyish pants and a blousy-looking white shirt. I'm sorta glad he decided to wear normal clothes today. I do kinda like the kid, but I don't wanna be seen with the boy who wears dresses, y'know?

It's a strangely warm winter day, so I figure we'll go to the nearby beach for a while. Then I notice a bunch of guys running dark berry juice through their hair and putting harbor mud on their skin to make it darker, and dressing up in Indian clothes. Looks to me like a nice little protest, and I do like those things since they can cause a bunch of chaos, so I slip away from the other two to see what's up.

"Hey!" I call out and they all look me over. Of course, it's a bunch of white guys. Seems like there aren't even a lot of slaves here in Boston. It ends up being there's not a whole lotta people who look like me.

"Go home to your master, boy." one of them says. Another protests that I could be an Indian, since I'm 'a little light-skinned to be a Negro.'

"Aww, but I don't wanna miss out on the fun!" I say. "We're gonna show those redcoats who's boss, right?" They all sort of mumble agreements. They're still kind of put off by my appearance. "Also, what are you doing, dressing like that?"

"We're protesting the new taxes on tea." one of them says.

"By dressing up like a bunch of savages?" Jacob, who has shown up asks.

"We're doing this so the English don't blame and shoot us colonists, and instead think it was the savages who broke into their ship and dumped their crate of tea." the leader one explains. I grin, and start taking off my black hand-me-down shirt from James.

"Let me come along. I know a thing or two about those cheap locks. I used to hang around the smith who makes 'em. You don't even have to mix up more dye or anything, 'cuz I'm already kinda dark." I say, and one of them goes,

"What are you, anyway? Black or Indian?"

I just laugh and say, "I'm whatever you'd rather have your daughter go to bed with." which makes a couple of them snort and even gets a couple to also laugh.

I put on the clothes I'm offered, which are leather pants and a beaded vest over my bare chest to hide the lighter scars which I brushed off as a "fringe colony thing." I also take a headband with a few feathers tucked in it, and I look exactly like an Indian.

"You boys, too?" one of them asks James and Jacob. Jacob shakes his head, smiling gleefully and James just says,

"We're just going to sit back and watch our brother here make an idiot out of himself."

"You'd be too obvious with that eye patch anyway." the man says, and then we're off towards one of the boats- it says _Dartmouth_ on the side.

* * *

Well, if you've read in history books, you know all about the Boston Tea Party. Soon, there are redcoats swarming the place, and me, James and Jacob get outta there. I kept the outfit, though. Never know when that can come in handy. We slow down as we get to the patch of woods that's a shortcut to home. Jacob starts laughing.

"I don't think that Father would believe that I just ran from the authorities who suspected me of the destruction of East India Company property!"

"Running from the redcoats is pretty much the daily routine for Al." James says and I can't even argue with that. Instead, we stop and James takes his satchel off and opens it up and pulls out the dinner he'd packed us from Oliver's pantry. James is Oliver's baby. He can get away with anything. I think it's because James is a lot bigger than Oliver.

"I don't like sweets." Jacob says, and James shrugs and gives me the spare red cake. I'm hungry, and I eat all of it, except the sandwiches.

"Jamie, how can you eat that stuff, knowing what it is?" I ask him, licking some of the icing off of one of the cakes. He looks at me, thinking for a moment about how to answer.

"I just sort of think about it being real meat, like I used to eat when Christophe still lived with us, before Oliver went..."

"Crazy?" Jacob offers, and James nods.

"Yeah. I just block out the thoughts that it's people, and imagine I'm eating cows and pigs and chickens."

I shudder. "I could never get the thought that it's other people out of my head. That's why I don't eat it." I look over at Jacob. "What about you?"

"Oh, Christophe told me all about what happens here, so I just sort of refuse everything that psycho makes, just in case, y'know?"

"How would you put a human body in a cake?" I ask, snorting. I take another bite of the reddish cake. "I mean," I continue with my mouth full, "it's kinda hard to do without someone noticing, wouldn't you think?"

Jacob nods, but he doesn't even accept a bite of the cake. I ask him, "How much meat do you eat at home?"

"Oh, lots. I love it, and our cook makes the best steaks and everything!" he answers.

"You have a cook?" I ask, and Jacob answers that of course he does, and I snort, "Spoiled little rich boy" at him.

"I know, I know... I wanna always be like this, so I never have to make my own foods and never have to drive my own buggy, and everything."

"Maybe you should'a been born a noble." I suggest, and then my happy feeling fades and I sigh. "I'll never be rich. Nobody wants me. Blacks don't want someone who wasn't raised black and whites don't want anybody but themselves." I sulk and pull my knees to my chest. "I guess he's right. I am just a worthless mistake."

"Who's right?" Jacob asks, a strange fire in his light purple eyes.

"Ollie. He always, when I'm bad, carves words into me with his knife." I take off my vest and show the scars. Jacob gets up without another word and storms off in the direction of home.

James and I look at each other and then gather up our things and follow him. I don't know what he's gonna do, but I think I might wanna pack up a satchel and run as soon as I can.


	9. Chapter 9

I'm hiding out in the fringe colonies now. Out in the mountains in Virginia is a great place to hide when two days ago your half brother whom you'd just met decided to go off on your parent who is a complete psycho and will hunt you down and gut you for inciting said half brother to go off on him.

Going off, in terms of Jacob, means trying to stab Oliver's eyes out. Especially once Oliver said "Now, now, Jacob, I don't want to have to gouge your eye out, now do I? Even if you'd match your brother that way."

"YOU did this to Jamie?" Jacob had raged, his eyes glowing in a way very similar to Oliver. Me, Christophe and James were wisely watching from the upstairs area that looks over the kitchen. I spent a lot of days dangling my legs into the kitchen as I watched, pressed against the railing, Oliver going about his cooking, and me and James used to do this thing where we'd lower a bucket on a line into the kitchen and Oliver'd put something like a plate of cookies or some wrapped sandwiches into it and let us pull it back up...

That's were we hid as Oliver and Jacob went at it, and then Jacob tried to get him with a knife, and the words, "I saw what you did to Al" were uttered and Jacob was hit so hard he just lay there against the wall and didn't move, and the second Oliver turned his gaze to me, trying to slip out the door into town were I could hide out until dark, I froze.

"You... of course it's you. You set him on me, didn't you?"

"N-no, Ollie, I didn't I swear!" I said in vain, and then as I saw him grab the knife I ran. I ran like I'd never run before, and ended up somewhere at the harbor before I realized I hadn't been followed. Breathing hard, I looked over what I'd gotten in my satchel as I tried to slip out.

I had a blanket, my Indian clothes, my stupid little eagle charm from when I was a kid living with my mom, four cakes, James' knife, my black shirt, brown pants, shoes and jacket on me and a couple of gold coins. I looked at one of the smaller boats and walked up to a man looking around in the darkening night.

"Hey, where are you off to?" I asked him, and he looked me over and said,

"We don't harbor runaways."

"I'm not a runaway. I'm... I'm actually an Indian. I was brought up by a white family since I was a baby. I wanna go away from here, though." I lied. He looked at me again and said,

"How far?"

"What's the most remote town in the colonies?" I asked.

"There aren't any towns after the Potomac River Port in Virginia." he told me.

"Take me there." I said, and produce my coins.

After I got to the port, I went into the general store, poked around for a while, and with my skills, I walked out with a cooking pot, a small rifle and some powder and shot for it, free of charge. From then on, I hiked out into the middle of nowhere. I made sure I was a half a day away from the biggest settlement I found, and set to work making my own camp in a cave area. There, I stay, and there I will stay until I know for sure Oliver is gone.


	10. Chapter 10

I've been staying with these Indians who found my little camp and took me in my buckskin pants and beaded vest back to their village. I don't really understand their language, but they're nice to me, so here I've been staying. I tried at first to eat animals I caught myself, thinking that maybe if I knew for sure that it wasn't people I'd be able to eat it. I couldn't. After puking up my meals for a couple days in a row, I decided that I'd just live on whatever non-meaty foods I could trade for.

I found out that fresh milk doesn't taste thick and sweet. By asking around, I finally figured out what kind of milk does. Human. So I don't drink milk anymore either, because the thought of it makes me sick, like anything else Oliver tried to give me that was really people. From the white settlements I've talked to under the lie that I'm actually an English-speaking Indian, know that our country is now one of states, the year is 1807, and it's getting dangerous these days to be someone like me in a state that's a certain point South.

So, I decide I'm going to go to the frontier in the farthest West of the country. First, someone like me, who isn't white, needs to figure out a way to get from here to St. Louis, which is where the settlers going West all go, according to everyone else around here. So, I get a map. The map tells me I need to go to the Ohio river and take that to the Missouri territory, and from there, I can go West to Oregon territory.

So, I hiked further South to the river, in an effort to find a boat. It's the middle of summer and it's really hot, so when I see a big field of white cotton that among other things has a boy running back and forth with a water bucket and a dock in the river that's being loaded with cotton bales as fast as this guy at this machine can crank 'em out and the others can press it into the baler, I stop. I wave my hand up like the others seem to be doing and a little boy with a bucket strapped to his back and a dipper in hand runs up to me. I drink and thank the kid and he nods quickly and takes off again. Huh. Maybe this wouldn't be a terrible way to live. Of course, among the slaves on this field, my light skin and straight-ish dark red hair stick out like a sore thumb.

Glancing around to make sure nobody is watching me, I slip off to the dock, where I am going to talk my way onto one of the boats going to St. Louis.

"Hey, hey, yeah, you." I get the attention of the man supervising the loading of the boat. "Official Cotton Inspector from this farm here, I'm here to take a look." The loaders have stopped their loading to look curiously at me, and I flash 'em a smirk and a wink and they all at once start agreeing that I am indeed the Cotton Inspector, Inspector of All Cotton-Hauling Boats On This Plantation. The one thing I find I've come to like about blacks over whites is that blacks always look out for those that need help. I guess when you're the bottom of society, you sort of feel compassion to those who are down. Whites are just mean to you when you're down.

The loading supervisor lets me onto the boat after shouting at the loaders to shut up and start their work again. I look at him and ask,

"Where's this boat going?"

"St. Louis, like all'a the boats here." is the answer I get. I recover fast and nod.

"Yeah, I know, I was just making sure you know, y'know?"

"Yer a bit of a mouthy one, ain't you?" he says. I shrug.

"Maybe, but I gotta stay with this boat all the way to St. Louis, and from there I'll go on to my next task, so you gotta tolerate me." I tell him. He looks me over really hard after I say that, and I stare straight ahead and as he goes behind me I cross my eyes and make a dumb grumpy face at the workers on the docks which gets the little water-boy giggling. Nobody is working now. I guess they want to see if this idea of mine really works.

"If yer part of this here plantation, why're you wearin' Indian clothes?" he asks me.

"So that people think I'm an Indian instead of a runaway when I'm making my way back here after my runs." I say like it's obvious. He goes 'hmph' and motions me into the airy storage area where I situate myself on top of a soft bale of cotton and lay back.

This is gonna be the easiest travel ever, all thanks to my skills in lying.


	11. Chapter 11

So, it turns out it's harder than I thought for a non-white guy in old buckskin clothes to get a wagon and oxen to go West. I also found out that everyone knows all the slaves on the plantation I came from and nobody ever heard of a Cotton Inspector named Al. Furthermore, goddamn, these shackles are sweaty. Like, it's hot in the South of the country, I know that, but my wrists are starting to itch horribly with heat rash as the wagon creaks along to wherever we're going. 'We' includes several poor souls whose owners sold 'em off on finding out that they couldn't take slaves West. There's one woman who's been quietly crying non-stop, holding her two-year-old on her lap. Guess she was a nanny who can't stand the thought of leaving her little white babies behind.

I know, this seems like I'm getting wrapped up in this stuff on purpose, but it's hard to be obviously not-white in this country. Anyway, as that wagon takes us to- ah, the driver told the one sitting in back with all of us that it's five hours to Richmond. Ugh, that's in Virginia, which is where I just came from. So much for going West, I guess. We don't talk among ourselves, because we're afraid of what the man sitting and watching us might do. So we all just sort of sit and look at each other.

"I hate this." I say out loud, and even though the watcher is glaring at me now, and nobody says anything, I feel that everyone agrees with me.

* * *

"And here, we have a strong young half-breed by the name of 'Al.' As you can see, he is very leanly muscled. He also is, however, quite disrespectful of authority and needs a strong, strict Master to teach him to behave right."

I cross my arms and glare at the crowd. I couldn't get out of the shackles before I was brought here. I can't run because like eight of these guys have guns and all I have is my satchel that they didn't search and a knife in it. An old woman comes up and looks me over. I huff through my nose to show off how much I hate the situation, and she backs up a little, looking me over like I'm some kind of un-tamed bull or something.

"Now, now, boy, you just stand there and let the nice lady look at you." the seller tells me, and I glare forward some more.

"Where are you from, Al?" the lady asks me.

"Boston." I say. "I was kidnapped."

The lady looks at the seller curiously. "Is that true, sir?"

"Hardly. He was a stowaway on a riverboat hauling cotton from Vicks Plantation. He was picked up in St. Louis trying to get passage West." the seller says, and I sigh.

"Do I sound like I'm from here to you?" I ask. Silence. "That's right. You kidnapped me, when I'm a free man. Now let me go and I won't say another word about it."

They let me go, and I request that my "family," the woman and her two-year-old are allowed with me. Somehow, I've talked my way out of another situation. I look at the woman once we're a decent ways away from the auction block, and ask her,

"Do you have anywhere to go?"

"My husband- he was freed and lives in New York."

I nod, and take her up to a carriage. The driver looks at us strangely, until I produce the coin purse I lifted off of the slave seller and hand him a bunch of 'em under the promise he make sure this woman and her baby are taken safely to New York. I wave her and her baby off, and then look around the town.

I'm Alphonse Jones, 17 year old swindler, thief and half-breed, and I'm going to get a free way West.


	12. Chapter 12

I spent a couple years working with a locksmith in a little settlement outside Chicago. By a couple, I mean he's dead now and it's something like 1845. His mind started going in about 1820 so I convinced him that I was my own son, sent to help him out so he didn't question it when I didn't show any signs of old age. I'm still, I think, about 17 and not getting any older, which sucks. I guess I'm just going to be a teenager forever now. But, I'm a teenager who is an expert in how locks work. I picked this as a trade because being me, a very petty theif, I thought it might be a good thing to understand how to pick and disable locks.

Also, living in civilization again I know how to actually behave exactly like most other people. It makes me think of how Oliver used to say he 'isn't like everyone else, but can act the part pretty well' which makes me feel sick and so I don't think about that often. My clothes right now instead of the old buckskin stuff I wore when I first left Oliver are nice. My current outfit is this cotton shirt that I wear with the collar turned down, tucked into my brown pants, and when I want to stick out less, this pale wide-brimmed hat.

I have a full-cloth jacket that's dyed black for when it gets cold, and boots so my pants don't drag in the dusty roads around here. It's nice. I don't wear the red necktie, because even though it looks fashionable, it's uncomfortable.

Anyway, I earned and stole enough money to finally go West, on something people are calling the Oregon Trail. The news is also reporting growing tensions between Northern states like New York and Illinois who don't want slavery to be legal and the farming Southern states like South Carolina and the newly joined Texas who sort of rely on slave labor.

I, as a non-white person agree with the North. I also am going to get out of here as soon as I can because there are reports of a pale-haired, English psycho running around this state murdering people who can't tell him where his half-breed son is. So, I go up to the wagon depot and smile warmly at the owner.

"Hey, Mr. Hanson!" I say, and he smiles back at me,

"Well, if it isn't Al Jones! What're you up to today?" he says.

"I need the best wagon you've got to take me along the trail West as soon as possible." I say.

"Alone?" he asks me surprised. I sigh. He's right. That's a stupid idea. If Oliver does catch up with me on the trail, I don't want to be alone.

"I'll leave with the next wagon train in Independence, alright, just please, give me the wagon, sir." I say.

"You know how to drive five oxen, Al?" he asks, having his ten year old son lead the wagon with the brown-furred, placid-looking animals pulling it in. I nod, eagerly, and am soon on the road towards the river crossing to get to Independence, the hub of the Oregon Trail.

So, once again secure in the knowledge that Oliver won't get me, I ride easy on my wagon seat. I've named my five oxen, too- Daisy is the one on the right back, George is right beside her, then there's Humpty and Dumpty, and then the leader one, his name is James, after my brother, who was always big and tough and calm, just like an ox.

Westward, ho! Away from Oliver I go!

* * *

 _ **A/N: Short, I know, but I promise the next few chapters will be longer. It'll be great.**_


	13. Chapter 13

I've reached the Mississippi River, and wow, I don't think I can cross this in my little wagon. I mean, I have to, since I lack money for the actual crossing, so I spend a bunch of time and effort building a small makeshift raft for the wagon, rolling it up onto it, getting the oxen into the shallow water and hitched to the front of the raft, and making sure the wagon, with all my stuff in it, is as watertight as I can get it. I take the wheels off the wagon so it doesn't shift, and then tie it down with a bunch of my rope.

It looks ridiculous. As I'm about to start heading out, this black girl in a dirty blue dress and white apron shows up. Her hair is tied back with the white cloth that I've seen house servants dress in. She looks around my age, and she sees me and stops, looking curiously at me, holding her skirt so it doesn't drag in the mud. I ignore her and go on with my business. Harboring a runaway could get us both hanged. As I go to push my raft further out into the water, I slip and fall into the mucky, waist-deep water. I come up sputtering and spitting, to the sound of her laughing.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm too scrawny to do this kind of work, huh?" I say, sighing and sitting on a log. She stops laughing and sits next to me, fishing a ratty cotton cloth out of her dress pocket and handing it to me to wipe the muck off of my face.

"Well, not scrawny, but you sure ain't a muscle-man, that's for sure." she says, with such a lilty drawling accent that I know she's from the South right then.

"A-anyway, I'm going to cross the river." I say, and I get up. She still stands at the bank, watching me.

"You're gonna go through all the trouble, as a Colored man, to cross that there river into slave-ownin' territory?" she asks me.

"I need to get to Independence." I say. "I'm going West, to the Oregon Territory. It's free there."

"Well, why don't you not risk them awful slavers and come with me down the river, to New Orleans where my mama lives?" she asks. I snort.

"Louisiana is a slave territory too." I say.

"Yes, but it ain't as bad there, since there's the Cajuns and the Creoles out in the bayous who'll make sure you ain't seen by no slaver if you don't wanna be."

I guess she's right. I got captured once before in Missouri, and I don't think I could talk my way out of it again. I look at my raft. "How am I gonna get down the river with a covered wagon?" I ask her.

"You made that raft, didn't'cha? Take the rest of the wagon apart and make that raft into a boat!"

So, with the help of this girl- Annie, she says her name is, and that she ran away from Tennessee- I take my wagon apart, and use the boards to sure up the raft, and make rails on it, and even a little sheltered area for us to sit under when it rains. It doesn't look pretty, but it floats, even with us and our supplies on it. I have to sell the oxen, though, and we both head into town to do it. For all five of 'em, we get about fifteen dollars. Pretty good considering they don't really trust either of us.

Then I push us off, and we're on our way down the river, with the poles and my makeshift rudder guiding us to New Orleans.

* * *

Well, that didn't go well. Here I am, with Annie, once more in the back of a wagon with shackles on my wrists. Slavehunters caught us, took our boat and supplies and via a telegraph station we were bought and sold to a planter in Alabama. So now, there's a couple of officers of some sort driving a wagon down the road and a deputy sitting in back with us. It sucks. We're going to a train station to be put in a box to be sent to the planter. I don't know how they intend to keep us from running off, but I plan to as soon as possible. It was stupid, to listen to Annie and head deeper into slave territory instead of across one state and out into the free frontiers.

Eventually, we find ourselves put on the train and locked into a car. I guess they don't think we're very smart, because nobody stays behind to watch us, and we're only warned that if we run, we'll "git caught again." Of course, I am instantly down on the ground, looking all over the place for any small bit of metal I can use to pick the door lock. I find it, in the form of someone's gate key or something they dropped. I grin and hold it up to Annie, and she sighs.

"So you got somethin' shiny, so what? We're still stuck here."

"No, we aren't. Just watch out for anyone walking by." I say, and get to work. After about five minutes the lock clicks and the door swings open. There's an open, un-watched door right at the end of our car, so we sneak off. Once more, my skills and no-how have gotten me free, and once more, I have a drive to go West. That is, until I see a bright pink shirt, pale hair and a knife in a belt on a man standing in the crowd talking to an officer.

"That man is dressed in awfully bright colors, Al. What do you think he's up to?" Annie asks. I swallow hard.

"I know him. He's bad news. Come on, let's get outta here before he sees me."

Just then I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I spin around, fully expecting half blue, half pink, crazy glowing eyes, but instead, it's a grubby man with a rifle in his free hand.

"Git back in the car, boy." he hisses at me, and I nod and pull Annie back on. This time, we're guarded. I see Oliver looking at the train as it puffs away, and the need for mischief strikes. I get on my knees on the seat, with the guard protesting, I stick my face out the window, and grinning, shout,

"HEY, PSYCHO! LOOKING FOR ME!?" and wave at Oliver as he turns around and stared in shock as the little brat he's been hunting for years grins from ear to ear out the window of a train getting up to full speed.

Now, I know Oliver can appear instantly in any place he wants, and I know if he knew what sort of situation it was to go onto that train, with me, Annie and the guard man, then he'd just pop in here and kill all three of us, but he didn't. As far as he knows this car is full of people, and he's not risking it.

Man, I know I've been sold into slavery somewhere in Alabama, and I know when Ollie actually does catch me there's gonna be hell to pay, but it's so worth it to mess with him when I can. I do love causing chaos.

* * *

 _ **A/N: It really was this difficult for even a free black man to do anything for a long time in this country, as opposed to J.G., my OC from "A Civil War Tale" who, despite being dirt-poor, never had these issues, since he's white. Just something to think about in terms of this story VS the other.**_


	14. Chapter 14

I sort of look around, sitting on the fence. I claimed a hurt foot today so I don't have to work in the hot fields of cotton and corn. Then, I give a flirty smile to one of the overseer's daughters and start strumming the instrument I have. It makes a nice twangy sound, that makes me think about a farm, just like this one. I'm here, me and Annie are both slaves now, but I'm away from Oliver.

Annie is pregnant. That may or may not be my fault. Honestly, with the way the farmer looks at her, I think she might have a little halfling baby. We sort of hope that no matter what, it looks like a white kid so maybe it won't have the same problems as the rest of us. But, I have a plan, like always, to get myself our of a situation. I've been keeping an eye on the minstrel shows that come by. I've been learning their songs, and practicing on my twangy thing, and me and Annie? We're gonna run away and form our own show.

The girl snorts something about how "our kind" is always trying to bed her, puts her little nose in the air and then stalks off, her pink skirt swishing. It kind of reminds me of Samantha Johnson, the shopkeeper's daughter back in Boston, when I was a kid. She owned a slave girl named Clementine... I don't think about what happened to Clementine.

So, it's a dark night, and me and a very pregnant Annie slip out, to the raft I made by the river, and we pole away. Nobody notices us.

Once again, I am a free man.

* * *

We've been travelling up river for a while now, this time fully intending to go to Missouri. I don't know why Annie hasn't had her kid yet, but she gets a bigger stomach every day it seems like. Nobody has questioned us, since we're minstrel singers, and we make money to buy food by performing our show. It starts with me jumping out with my best idiot grin and looking over all the people and going,

"Wowee! It sure is nice of all you to come out here to see us! We ain't worth it!"

The crowd protests that we are in fact worth it, 'cuz we're just that good. I keep my grin on and say, "Well, then I guess we ought to get on with the show, huh?" and they all cheer, and I go and get Annie and I say, "This is my lovely girl, Mary-Lee! Say hi to the people, Mary!"

"Wal hi there!" she says, giggling. "Bobby, hun, gimme a nice tune so's I can entertain!"

And then I take the twangy instrument- a banjo, it's called, off my back and start twanging away a tune, a popular one- "All the Folks at Home"

 _"Way down on th' Swanee River,_

 _Far, far away!"_

We both start out. We go into Oh Susanna, Ol' Dan Tucker, and we end with a new one that's rising right now, Dixie's Land.

 _"If you wanna drive out sorrow,_

 _come and hear our song tomorrow_

 _Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixie land!"_

As our boat pulls away, the tips and things from the crowd being collected, we keep going, the banjo twanging away and mostly me singing the chorus, _"Well I wish I was in Dixie, away! Away! In Dixie's land I take my stand to live and die in Dixie- Away, away, away down South in Dixie!"_

And well, we make lots of money, and soon we're in Missouri again, ready to head off on the great Oregon Trail.


	15. Chapter 15

We've been going along the trail with our prairie schooner. It's called that because it's like a ship, only on the prairie. I know, that sounds stupid. Anyway, we're staying in Fort Kearny, which is the first protected resting point through the trail. Of course, it's a buzz of activity- the year is 1861, and there's a war going on. We, along with Northerners and Southerners alike are going west to escape the war. I won't be drafted, since I'm a 17-year-old non-white man, so me and Annie are safe. Apparently the Southern states, like, five of 'em so far decided to just leave over the slavery issue. I know I'm not those states because I only feel it as a sort of ache in my side that makes me limp sometimes. That, and whatever made us nation-folk, God, I guess, would be really stupid to make someone like me the personification of somewhere like the slave-holding South.

Anyway, we're camped out at this fort, when I hear this shouting. Turns out, Annie is having her baby. We get the fort medics and they're gathered around her and helping her, and well, it's sort of gross, watching the baby come out of her. But she isn't done once the first little brown-skinned baby has the blood wiped off and ends up plunked into a blanket in a nurse's arms, another is coming out. I, being grossed out by the sight of baby being squeezed out of a girl, tend to the other weakly crying bundle. It's a girl, I'm told, and as she opens her bleary little eyes, I see that they're a dull red just like mine. Her hair, a damp fuzz on top of her tiny head is black, like Annie's.

The other baby, another girl, looks exactly like her sister. They're twins. Identical ones, too. Annie gets the night to rest, her babies at her side as she lays in the bed I made in the wagon out of our straw mattress and some blankets, and I sleep with a blanket and soft cotton-stuffed cushion on the wagon seat, a rifle right where I can reach it. I don't like the gun, but Annie, after I explained the situation with Oliver, agrees I need it.

So I'm laying there and looking out at the stars. The other thing about Annie and the babies' bed is that it's in the wagon, surrounded by our stuff, which is stacks of supplies, and covered by the white canvas of the wagon. My seat is really the only open way to get into the safe little space. So, I'm laying there, looking at the stars, and I hear a humming. It sounds familiar, so I go on edge and sit up.

"Al, what-" Annie starts but I shush her fast. If he hears her or one of the babies cries... I shiver a little at the thought. I grab my gun and go to walk around the wagon, in which my family is sitting quietly. Then, I see him, talking to one of the guards. I'm about to just quietly slip back into my wagon before he sees me, but then he turns around, and this big-ass grin spreads across his face, and he's over there instantly, and grabbed me by the shoulders.

"Alphonse! I've been looking forever for you, sweetie!" he says, and I swallow hard.

"N-nice to see you too, Ollie." I say, deciding to play nice until he stops also playing nice. He looks me over.

"Goodness, you're still so scrawny! What you need is a good meal!" he leads me over to his fire.

"Nah, Ollie, I already ate." I protest.

"Oh come on, just a snack won't hurt you! I brought some cakes along on the train!"

"There's a train line out here?" I ask nervously. Oliver's rummaging through his bag and I just sort of try to relax. He comes up with this bundle of cloth and I sigh and take it. I do like Oliver's sweets. It's one of the only things I can tolerate that he makes.

"It's good. Thanks, I guess." I say, taking a bite of the red cake. I wrap the rest back up. I figure I'll take it to Annie later. Oliver starts to ask why I'm not eating but I just assure him that I might not be hungry now, but I'll eat it later. So, we sit and talk and as I realize he really does think I'm travelling on my own and not with a girl and two new babies, I relax.

Oliver tells me all about what's happened since that night, and that's where the story comes out that Jacob wasn't butchered like a hog the night I ran away. He woke up and got his own little knife, and according to Oliver, Jacob got him "quite a bit with that little claw of his." This is proven when Oliver pulls his shirt up to show me the pale scar across his belly to his side. He tells me how James went the next day to try and find me and never came back, and how Christophe, right after the attack gathered Jacob up and got the next coach back to Detroit.

If Ollie wasn't a psycho who pretty much drove us all out, I'd feel worse for him. Still, I muster all the sympathy I can, because, well, Ollie did raise me, so I guess I kind of owe him that much. I do sort of wonder where James is. I hope he's alright. There were always stories of press-gangs hanging around looking for tough-looking boys to kidnap away to sea. James is bigger and tougher looking than me, last I remember, but we weren't entirely done growing, at sixteen. So, I bet he looks like a for-real mountain man now or something. He always was an outdoors-loving kind of kid. Anyway, the one thing I had over James was that I could sneak around town and not get pressed by those gangs.

Eventually, I just tell Oliver that I plan to settle "somewhere out West" and figure that since the West is such a vast, giant area, he'll never find me. Then, since it's late, I head back to Annie in our wagon, and crawl into the bed next to her with the girls between us, and I guess I'm safe now.


	16. Chapter 16

"Hey, Al!" calls out the man who just ran up to me. We've lived in the Montana area for something like five years now. I'm wearing a loose off-white shirt and a brown leather vest, along with my pale hat, brown pants and boots. The man is someone who stays in this town also. It's a small town called Mirage.

Anyway, this guy runs up to me, as I'm chopping some wood down, since it's getting to be winter and all, and he says,

"There's this guy in town- big guy, blond hair, pulled back with some kinda ribbon, says he wants to talk to Alphonse Jones."

"Does this big blond guy happen to have an eye patch?" I ask. The man blinks.

"Why, yes. Yes he does. You know him?"

"Yeah. That'd be my brother, James."

Oliver always thought James' corn-colored hair was the best thing. So, James always had it long. James did not like having hair in his face, so he always tied it back. I toss my axe and the wood into the wagon and make it go as fast as I can into town, where indeed James is standing. I jump off the wagon and shout out,

"Jamie!"

He turns around and I grin at him and he opens his arms up, without changing his expression, and I run into him. He's gotten a lot bigger. He's nearly half a foot taller than me now, which is a lot more than when I last saw him. He's wearing a red shirt and black pants. He's got black, heavy boots tucked into his pants and a knife in his belt. That's my Jamie!

I take James back to the house where the girls, Mila and Violet run up to us shouting,

"Papa, papa, who's that?"

I just laugh, "That's your Uncle Jamie! He's from Canada."

"I'm Violet. Why do you look like a pirate?" Violet asks James. He looks to me and I shrug. He crouches down to her level, which is pretty far for a big guy like James.

"When I was a kid a little older than you, I... Got attacked by a big bull moose." he says. I snort and he shoots me a look. Little Violet looks in awe at him.

"You fought a big moose?" she whispers in the loud way little kids do. James nods.

"He might've took my eye, but I took his antlers. Hung 'em up right over my fireplace. You ever ate a moose before, Violet?" mouth open, she shakes her head. James reaches into the satchel he had with him and pulls out a hunk of dried meat. He uses his knife to shave off a few bits and gives one to Annie, one each to the girls and offers me one. I shake my head and Mila says,

"Papa doesn't eat meats or drink milk. He's a veggie-terror."

"Vegetarian." I correct her, and grin at James. He nods.

"I forgot." he turns to Annie, "He's been one since he was something like twelve. Since I lost my eye, practically."

"You were ten, James." I correct him, and he looks at me, startled. "I remember. Your birthday is a little before mine and you had your accident on my tenth birthday. You got the knife for your birthday, in fact." I say, smirking at him. He snorts.

"Good memory for someone who let a kid with a peg-leg beat him up in school."

"Hey!"

"Well, I'll put the girls to bed and leave you two to your talk." Annie says, ushering the girls into their safe back room.

I look at James, and he sighs.

"Oliver might have followed me. Does he know you have those kids? A wife?"

I shake my head. "Annie isn't my wife. She's just a former slave girl I found while going west. We messed around a bit and we had the girls so we live together. And no, Oliver doesn't know I have a family. He'd probably kill them if he did."

"By probably you mean they'd be gutted before you could even explain." James says. I nod. James sighs. I smile at him.

"So, what's my cute little brother been up to in the last few years?" He rolls his good eye at me.

"I'm not cute, or little, and I'm older than you..."

"Alright, what's my giant burly lumberjack brother been doing."

"Actually I was a straight-up lumberjack for a while. Then I ended up here, heard of a half-breed man with a fancy name and figured it was you." he answers. I nod.

"And Ollie? You seen him?"

"Not since I left for the Canadian frontier." he says.

"I saw him back East at one of the forts. He didn't find out about the girls or Annie, thank God. The girls had just been born. Annie was asleep with 'em in the wagon." I smirk at James. "Wow, you really have grown." I purr at him, and he snorts.

"Don't you have a girl and kids?"

"Yeah, but," I say, moving into his lap, "I'm already pretty screwed up... what's a little messing around with my overly attractive big brother?"

* * *

 _"Now, now, little one, this won't hurt if you don't squirm." Oliver purrs as he carefully tips Violet's head back, positioning the already-bloody knife at her little throat. She jerks and ends up nicked by the blade, crying out. "Look, see," Oliver says in that eerily patient, calm voice, "this is what happens when we squirm. Your mummy and sister didn't squirm... much, and I do think your daddy knows better."_

 _I try to go get her, but find I'm tied to a chair, and the stripped, bled, gutted bodies of both Annie and Mila are already in a heap in the kitchen floor. I scream,_

 _"VIOLET!" and Oliver traces the knife down Violet's neck and to her little chest, where the knife plunges in, cutting her ribs wide open so Oliver can grab her heart and stuff it, still warm, bloody and twitching into my mouth to stop my cries. I gag and feel like I'm gonna be sick, I'm gonna be sick, I'm gonna be..._

"Al! Al! Alphonse, wake up!"

I wake up to James shaking me in the bed in the living room we'd both fallen asleep in after our fun. I think for a moment that I'm back in Boston, in me and James' shared bed, but then remember where I really am. I hug him tightly and he's tense. He hugs me back after a moment and I look up at him.

"Jamie, what happened?"

"You were whimpering and crying in your sleep. I woke you up because you started screaming your kid's name over and over, so I thought it might be a nightmare." he explains and I just nod and tell him what happened, and then I go to check on Annie and the girls. They're all asleep in the big bed, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

 _It's only a dream,_ I tell myself, _Oliver can't find me out here. He never will. You're safe. All of us are safe._


	17. Chapter 17

_**A/N: Gonna give a bit of a warning. But if Al's dream in the last chapter didn't freak you out, you'll be fine here. This will probably be the last "Mature" chapter. So yay. Also no more chapters until later this month. I'm going on vacation for the Fourth of July with my friend and family.**_

* * *

It's been a bunch of months since James left, and I'm heading up back to the house. There's an offer to go in the coming season to be a cowboy and walk cows to a range in Texas, which I, having no other working opportunities, will take. I'm going home to tell Annie, Mila and Violet the good news. It seems quiet as I get to the house, but that's alright. The girls are still young, maybe they needed a nap, or they're doing schoolwork or something.

There's a pot on the stove, which I assume is supper, so I mix it a little, and some meat surfaces. Yuck. Oliver made stew sometimes, but there's only one way to tell if it's all the way done and ready to be taken off the heat. I put a sliver in my mouth. It's like... veal. Or pork. I can't tell. In order to tell, I put a bigger chunk in my mouth. Then the taste hits me. I know exactly what this tastes like. It sends me back, right back to sitting at the supper table with James and Oliver, sipping my bowl of person stew, so little my legs don't reach the ground with the chair I'm sitting on. The smell... It made me think breifly of Oliver's brightly colored kitchen- all pinks and purples and teals.

I spit the meat out right away, and turn around at a creak in the floorboards. There stands Oliver, blood splattering the light pink shirt he's wearing, as well as a bit on his face. He's holding, I see right away, a big, bloody knife, too. His eyes are glowing in the way they do when he's angry, and I swallow hard.

"W-where's Annie? A-and the girls?"

He looks me over and gives that creepy wide smile. "Well you were just having a taste of the girls, and your little girlfriend... she got in the way. Check the back yard for what's left of her."

My stomach turns. My whole family, gone like that, because of Oliver. Because he can't let me be happy. Because worthless, useless little mistakes like me aren't allowed to be happy. I start to tear up, and Oliver drops the knife and appears at my side. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I don't have it in me to shove him away as he says, almost sympathetically,

"Now now, love, it's alright. It was for the best, after all. Come on, you'll come back to London with me, and everything will be alright. I own a baker's shop there. I know you like helping me bake."

"I won't." I say, quietly, and I feel him tense. I stand up straighter, anger building up in me now. "I won't go with you. You may have killed my family, killed and cooked and ate them like the sick, demented psycho you are, but you are _never_ getting me back. This time, I am _not_ telling you where I'm going, so you will _never_ find me, and _never_ take me with you anywhere again. I'm not a little kid anymore, Oliver. You don't scare me."

With that, I take my travel satchel, which I'd set up for a situation like this, and I leave the cabin, and never look back. I'm going to the wildest parts of the West, where I know for sure I'll never have to worry about him again. That's the last of Oliver I see for a long, long time.


	18. Chapter 18

_**I'm back guys! I'm gonna be 18 on the 23rd of this month, so I'll be an adult! Of course, I still have to go to school until June, but whatever. I can take my laptop to school so maybe I can type fanfiction while I'm in class or something, I dunno. Anyway, enjoy the chapter! ~CutelittleMouseygirl**_

* * *

It's been years. It's now 1980. I've been just scraping along. I guess you could say the whole thing with Oliver and Annie screwed me up. I guess you could say where I am right now is a bad I am is this: I'm laying in the bed in my messy one-room apartment, shirtless, hungover and probably late for work. I need to work to pay for the crappy messy apartment. The best thing, I happen to think is the girl I've got laying in my arms. I guess I brought her home last night.

She groans as I get up, looking over at the clock. I am in fact late for work. Shit. I scramble to find my work shirt and name tag, and when I finally do, the girl is looking me over.

"You were my hookup last night?" she asks me.

"Yeah, what of it?" I ask, giving her a flirty smirk.

"Huh. Sorta scrawny." she scoffs. "What did you have that the other guys didn't?"

"How about a piercing... y'know, on my dick?" I say, smirking wider. Yeah, I'm pierced. As of now I have my ears in like, three or four places each done, one in the center of my tongue, both my nipples, my eyebrow and "down there." I'm considering a nose, lip and belly button thing. It really makes girls think I'm a total badass, which I am. Also the dick one is actually a row of 'em going up it. I always get asked if it hurt, and yeah, it did. But that's alright, 'cuz it can make girls scream in pleasure all night long.

I guess I could rob a bank or something for money, but girls don't like it when a guy is too much of a bad boy. I mean, casual shoplifting and vandalism are one thing, but actually robbing places? Pff, I don't wanna end up arrested while I don't have anyone to bail me out. The girl just sighs and gathers up her shirt and skirt and leaves, and I get a good look at her ass, and damn, drunk-me can pick up hot chicks.

I know, I know. I'm underage. I stopped getting older at about 19, but that's why there's a such thing as fake IDs. Anyway, for about ten years I've lived in an apartment in Seattle and worked odd jobs. Today, I fill in for a guy who can't make it to the Starbucks shop down in the market. So I put on the green shirt and brown slacks I'm expected to wear, and since it looks "unprofessional" I take out all the metal in my ears. I don't know exactly why they think a tongue piercing and eyebrow one are alright, but whatever.

Then, heading into the place, looking really confused is this cutie. He's got this dirty-blond hair that has a part sticking up, sort of like mine. He must've been out on a run because he's wearing a neon green tank top, bright blue shorts and a lighter blue headband. Or he's just one of those stupid kids who dresses like that. I smirk in my flirty way at him and say,

"What'll you take?"

"Uh, a large-"

"Grande," I correct him. He looks a little annoyed at me, but continues,

"Fine, grande chocolate frappuccino, and uh, extra whipped cream, please." He finishes. I nod.

"And what's your name, so I can put it on your cup, and know who I'm askin' out?" I say, still smirking. I flirt with guys and girls alike. It's sort of a problem I guess. The cutie blushes and stammers,

"Ah-Alfred. That's my name, Alfred. Er," he's getting more and more flustered by the moment, "but uh, most humans- I mean people call me Alfie."

Hmm. So he's a nation. I wonder which one. I put his order up on the order board and casually ask him, "So, where you from, Alfie?" since at this moment in time there isn't that many other people in here, and nobody in line behind him. It's eleven AM on a Monday- everyone's at work or school.

"New York's where I live, but I grew up in Boston."

"Huh, me too. What year'd you leave?" I ask. Usually, I've found, nations, once they're comfortable, especially younger ones, will answer something like 1800 or 1743 as a year like that, which no human could ever say.

"1778- I mean uh... 1877 uh..." he sighs. "I'm sorry... I guess I'm just being weird, huh?" he puts his hand out to me. "I'm Alfred F. Jones, America personified, and I'm here to collect you, Alphonse."

I shake his hand and blink, right as his drink appears in front of me. "Uh, wait... You're America?"

"Yeah. I always have been!"

"Same here..." I remark, and hand him his drink. Looking at the clock, I see my shift is almost over. I smirk, pop open the cash register, stuff a couple stacks of cash in my pocket without being noticed, shut it, hop over the counter and grin at Alfred. "Well, I guess I'm going with you, then."

Alfred had stared, wide-eyed as I took the money, and I just laughed and put my hand around his shoulders as we left the store. The way I see it, there's not really a point to not taking money from big companies. Plus they honestly just make it so easy I can't resist. Alright maybe I have a problem. Whatever. People dig a troubled-ass bad boy anyway.

* * *

We're in a government car now, heading to the airport, where Alfred says there's a jet waiting to take us to New York where the UN Headquarters is. He says there's become in recent times a problem- two personifications for the same nation. I shrug and start counting the money I stole from the register. It comes out to about two hundred dollars. Nice. I can get a pretty decent prostitute for a whole night for that much. That's if I can't pick someone up at a club or bar. I get lonely if I sleep alone. It's tragic. At least that's what I tell the girls.

Eventually we get to the airport, and Alfred holds up this ID and we're lead to this private hangar where there's a little jet.

"Nice. We got a pilot?" I ask, looking the little aircraft over. Alfred grins at me.

"You're lookin' at him!"

I blink. I just met Alfred. Why would I trust him to fly me across the country? Seriously. Its, uh... a five-hour flight. This kid got himself distracted and went for a McFlurry on the way to the airport. I back up.

"No way am I lettin' you fly us that far. No offense, but I don't trust you!"

"Alphonse, I'm one of the best pilots in the air force! I think we'll be fine." he answers. I sigh.

"Call me Al." I say, and climb into the plane. I guess if I do die it's not like I'll be missed.


End file.
